In 1835, he was present when his father and other Wurundjeri elders met with
John Batman and witnessed the signing of the historically contentious "
treaty" which heralded the establishment of a permanent British colony in Victoria. In 1840 Wonga injured his foot in the
Dandenongs. Billibellary searched for him, and when found carried him to a homestead where he was transported back to Melbourne by dray to be cared for and have his wound dressed for a period of two months by Assistant Protector
William Thomas and wife Susannah. His father died in 1846 and by 1851 he was recognised leader, the ngurungaeta or headman of the Wurundjeri and
Kulin people. By 1848 he had joined the
Native Police Corp and led armed and mounted units conducting licence hunts with Captain Dana during the early years of
Victoria's gold rush. After the Corps were disbanded in 1853, he worked with Colonel Joseph Anderson,
Joseph Panton,
Alfred Selwyn,
Robert Brough Smyth, and as an occasional guide for landscape painters Eugene Von Guerard,
Nicholas Chevalier and later with Louis Buvelot. He was a regular guest of
Lilly and Paul de Castella at Yering Station while his family took refuge upstream on the Yarra River around Woori Yallock-Launching Place. A reserve was gazetted for that site until a gold rush to Hoddles Creek in 1858. In February 1859 some Wurundjeri elders, led by Wonga (aged 35) and brother Tommy Munnering (aged 24) petitioned Protector Thomas to secure land for the
Taungurong at the junction of the
Acheron and
Goulburn rivers. "I bring my friends Goulburn Blacks, they want a block of land in their country where they may sit down plant corn potatoes etc etc, and work like white man", he told Thomas. He was a successful entrepreneur, described by Fred Cahir in
Black Gold (2013) trading building materials, baskets and meats and labour with farmers and miners. == Personal life and death ==